Tools

The other week the Caromble team met up to exchange the experiences from the Indie-event and think about where to go next. So now is the perfect time now to reassess before committing to a more final direction in development: Our prototype is far enough to judge the players reactions, but still early enough to change direction if necessary. And we had a lot of input.

The main things we want to figure out now is how to move on commercially: We all agree that we would love to make some money out of it. Maybe early investments (not just after we’re done), so we can put it in the development.

We also want to try some more gameplay tweaks – we have the chance now to still test around. The main mechanic is too simple, we should at least allow more interaction for better players.

Taking aside the problems that result from presenting a prototype (missing content and features, lack of consistent quality, not much guiding of the player), here are the points we agreed on from the feedback.

The good:

It is already a lot of fun, so the basic idea can stay. In my experience early prototypes are often more of a drag (because of the mentioned shortcomings) – Caromble is a positive exception.

It ran really stable. After some trouble setting it up, I don’t think we ever had a crash or performance problems.

The art style can stay. Also the decision of the scenario with the cities got really positive reactions.

The music worked well.

Indigo - yet another picture

Since that is the last roundup: A thanks goes again to the game garden for letting us show our game at thier event.

The bad:

The art is too inconsistent. The idea with making it comic-style is not getting across enough. Funnily it seems I put too much work into it. All the assets I rushed for the event got the most positive feedback. I could write a whole article about the state of confusion and dilemma that puts me in – but I spare you.

The sounds: There was not enough variation. They were not convincing enough. But we knew it, since it was a bit rushed but still there is much work ahead for us.

Several things caused confusion, that we ourselves didn’t even see anymore: The pink blobs that fly to the player. We should remove them or make them useful. We have to add walls to the level, to make clear what the ball reflects from.

The slogan has to change – heh I liked the joking “yet another breakout” – but some people took it seriously. So we’ll have to come up with something more positive. No ideas yet.

So the plan: Fix the problems, add a deeper layer of gameplay and get the level editor going. Then we can test around more, and create a playable version with more levels. Once that all works, we can show it to publishers or even publish it as beta on the website.